


tell me i will be released

by Wanderingchronicle



Series: no choir [2]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Allegedly Platonic Bed-sharing, Angst, Caleb's really trying, Crying, Forehead Kisses, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Pining, Sleepy Cuddles, post episode 25
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-02
Updated: 2018-07-02
Packaged: 2019-06-01 05:35:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,766
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15136265
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wanderingchronicle/pseuds/Wanderingchronicle
Summary: He’s slowly sliding into sleep when he hears a shaky, hitched breath from the bed next to him, and instantly he’s wide awake, staring into the darkness where he can see Molly’s silhouette faintly outlined in moonlight, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyelids.There’s another shaky, uneven breath from the other bed, and Caleb makes up his mind.





	tell me i will be released

**Author's Note:**

> Once again TY to the Widomauk server for enabling.
> 
> I brought more cuddles y'all and this time I made it SAD

" _I know you've tried_  
_But something stops you every time_  
_You cry a little, so do I, so do I_  
_And it's your pride_  
_That's keeping us still so far apart_  
_But if you give a little, so will I, so will I_ "

 

\-- Florence and the Machine, " _Hiding_ "

 

\--

 

Initially, the arrangement had been thus: Caleb and Nott in one room, and Molly and Beau in the other. This had suited Caleb just fine, as it meant he had a room largely to himself to copy down spells with minimal interruptions.

However, it became apparent after a couple of nights that forcing Beau and Molly to share a small, poky inn room wasn’t the best of ideas. Molly showed up at breakfast one morning looking tense and irritated, and Beau looked like she hadn’t slept at all.

“Look,” she says after a moment, “we need to rest up if we’re going to catch up with the others, and Molly keeps waking me up at night with his sleep talking and thrashing around.”

Molly shrugs, staring into the bottom of his finished cup of coffee. “I’d stop if I could,” he replies, sounding genuinely apologetic, “but I don’t even know I’m doing it.”

Caleb and Nott exchange glances. “Molly can share with us tomorrow night,” Caleb suggests, “so that you can get some uninterrupted rest, Beau. I’m sure you’d appreciate having a room to yourself.”

Beau looks furtively pleased at the idea. “I mean,” she mumbles, “we could make a girls night of it--”

“We could,” Nott replies, with no real enthusiasm.

Caleb frowns quietly. Splitting the Mighty Nein down the middle had done them no favours. Although it had been an arrangement of convenience at first, it felt like something vital had seeped out of the group without Jester’s bright sunny smile, or Fjord’s steady presence. He’d caught Molly looking over his shoulder, as if looking for someone, a worried crease between his eyebrows.

“That is settled then,” he says, “Molly rooms with us tonight, and Beauregard gets some sleep before she becomes any more exhausted.”

Beau gives him a look of transparent relief, rubbing at her eyes. Mollymauk hasn’t looked up from his coffee yet, and upon closer inspection he looks just as drained as Beauregard does.

Their breakfast arrives, and Caleb is relieved for the distraction from the dark smudges under Mollymauk’s eyes and the listless way he stares at his coffee. It seems like Molly has shrunk, almost, and it’s distressing to watch.

\--

Despite vigorous questioning, it seems the citizens of Hupperdook know about as much about their vanished friends as they do. The four of them return to the inn disenheartened and exhausted, and Beau almost immediately vanishes upstairs to bed.

Caleb excuses himself shortly afterwards, trundling up to his room to copy out more spells. It’s blessedly quiet, and he has nothing to occupy his attention but the arcane diagrams before him and the scratch of quill on parchment.

At some point, Molly comes in and leaves some of his belongings on the other bed, before going elsewhere. Nott still hasn’t appeared, perhaps having left to relieve some of the “grumpier” citizens of Hupperdook of their valuables.

Shortly after ten o clock, Molly reappears, damp-haired, and sits down on his bed. For a moment, Caleb wonders if he’s going to try to engage him in some idle chit chat, but instead Molly starts rustling around in his pack.

Caleb tunes the noise out, continuing to scratch away at his work. Molly sighs from behind him and there’s a series of quiet jingles, then silence apart from quiet breathing. When he turns around, Molly has divested himself of most of his horn jewellery and appears to be methodically wiping it all with a cloth.

“Most of this isn’t terribly good metal,” he says conversationally, “and you can get problems with rust, or mold.”

Caleb nods mutely. Molly looks younger like this, bare of his usual ostentation and with grey-purple smudges under his eyes. His hair is damp, presumably from the bath, and combed off his face.

Seeing Molly look so  _tired_  and so  _young_  was doing something awful and twisty in his chest, so Caleb looks back at his paper. His spells are all copied out, he has nothing more to do, but looking at Molly quietly cleaning all his jewellery feels like an invasion of privacy, like some wall has come down that he doesn’t have a right to look over.

After what feels like an age but realistically is only ten minutes or so, he hears a jangle and a thud as Molly places all his jewellery on the nightstand, gets up, and starts wrapping his scimitars in his coat.

Caleb takes that as his cue to get up and begin going through the motions of going to bed, divesting himself of his coat and then, more carefully, his book holsters. He kicks off his shoes and socks, unwinds the bandages around his hands, and glances briefly over at the other bed.

Molly blinks at him tiredly. “I don’t mind if you want to read,” he says, “I’ve slept through worse.”

It’s hard to know how he’s supposed to answer that, so Caleb just nods and extinguishes the lamp between their two beds before sliding under the covers. There’s no sign of Nott, but he has to trust that she’ll be fine.

A few metres away, he can hear Molly trying to get comfortable, the shift of a body on a mattress and a flicker of movement as his tail switches back and forth restlessly.

Caleb sighs and closes his eyes, willing his breath to slow. Frumpkin hops up on the bed and curls up next to his hip, and he raises a hand to give his familiar a scratch behind the ears. Beside him, he hears Molly violently roll over onto his back.

The minutes tick by, and Caleb dozes. Vaguely, he can hear Molly roll over again, so he flicks his fingers and sends Frumpkin from his bed to Molly’s. There’s a brief, delighted huff, then the unmistakable sound of Frumpkin purring as Molly scratches him on the chin.

Caleb smiles, feeling a little guilty about how proprietary he feels about that barely-audible noise. Molly’s not his, not in that way, not in any way, but he can’t help seizing those moments Molly smiles at him or approves of him and secreting them guiltily away. They’re not his to keep, they don’t mean anything, but he steals them regardless.

The memory of Molly’s ribs rattling under his fingers those weeks ago sticks in his head. He was cuddled up to Yasha, too, everyone curled up in a loose knot like a wall of bodies between him and the world, and Molly’s back pressed up against his side meant nothing at all. The memory has no right to catch in his chest like a fishhook, and yet he is helpless to dislodge it.

He’s slowly sliding into sleep when he hears a shaky, hitched breath from the bed next to him, and instantly he’s wide awake, staring into the darkness where he can see Molly’s silhouette faintly outlined in moonlight, pressing the heels of his hands against his eyelids.

There’s another shaky, uneven breath from the other bed, and Caleb makes up his mind.

He gets out of bed and pads across the room, easing himself down next to Molly. He remembers waking to the sound of Aeodwulf trying to steady his breathing, of him and Astrid climbing out of bed and slotting themselves in on either side, stroking Aeodwulf’s back until the shuddering subsides and the panic receded. It was a different time, a kinder one, but he finds he can still wring out something of that younger and more generous Caleb here.

“Mollymauk,” he murmurs, wedging himself up against the headboard, “talk to me.”

Molly takes another shuddering breath, then takes his hands away from his eyes, lowering his arms to the bedspread. His fists open and close spasmodically, like he doesn’t know what to do with them. “Yasha’s gone,” he says, sounding tense and miserable, “and she could just...be doing her thing, but if what if she’s not? What if she’s hurt? What if she’s seriously hurt, Caleb?”

Oh, but it sticks a knife in Caleb’s chest and twists it to see Mollymauk staring up him, red eyes full of tears and voice thick. There’s nothing truly reassuring he can say, so he swings his legs up onto the bed and says, “You really love her, huh?”

Molly barks out a wet, choking laugh. “She’s my first and best friend, and I love her like the moon love the tides,” he says, the corners of his mouth twisting up into a slightly wild-eyed smile.

Caleb gives him a long look, and Molly deflates a little, his brief moment of bravado disappearing like smoke. “I always miss her when she’s gone. I like you all, I really do, but you can’t…”

“Can’t what?” Caleb asks, folding his hands in his lap. Molly gives him a desperate look, opening his mouth and closing it again, fist clenching in the bedspread. He makes an abortive movement towards Caleb, then seems to flatten himself against the mattress unhappily, shoulders hunched and tense.

He’s never seen Molly so desperately, obviously unhappy. Caleb pauses, then makes up his mind, lifting one hand out of his lap and gently brushing his fingertips over the crown of Molly’s head.

Immediately, Molly leans up into the touch, bunting his head into Caleb’s hand like Frumpkin does when he’s desperate for attention. He exhales shakily, forehead pushed up against the heel of Caleb’s hand for a moment, before he draws in breath sharply and for all that Molly’s eyes are solid red, Caleb can feel wary eyes on him.

He withdraws his hand slightly, then gently scrapes his nails across Molly’s scalp, combing through half-dried purple waves. Molly exhales slowly, turning his face in towards Caleb’s thigh. His breathing sounds wet and a little ragged, but it’s slow, and Caleb might be imagining the tension slowly bleeding out of hunched shoulders and the scrunched up, miserable look on his face slowly smoothing out.

“I’m sorry,” Molly says thickly, “I shouldn’t be -- you shouldn’t have to do this. I wouldn’t...I wouldn’t ask for, for,” he shudders, burrowing his head into Caleb’s hip. Caleb smooths his hair down, rubbing his thumb over the join between Molly’s horn and his skull.

For a moment, Caleb hears something of himself in Molly’s voice, the crawling feeling that he’s encroaching, that he’s asking too much, that he’s asking for more than he deserves. The swift and immediate flare of affection in his ribs startles him, the surge of anger at the sheer idea that Molly might not deserve this.

He thinks of the uncertain look in Molly’s eyes when he asked if he could join the warm heap of bodies those weeks ago, and of the slow rattling purr under Caleb’s fingers when Molly found himself surrounded by bodies, blocked in on all sides by warm flesh and the tacit acknowledgement that the affection was something they all wanted, even if only Jester really asked for it.

“You can ask for this,” Caleb murmurs, “I want you to.”

Molly goes very, very still for a moment. Slowly, as if any faster and Caleb would startle and bolt, he sits up, turning around so he and Caleb are facing each other. “Tell me if I...if I want too much,” he rasps, uncertainty etched in every line of his face and in the tension in his shoulders.

Caleb shifts over slightly, getting comfortable against the headboard, then reaches out for Molly. “This is well within my limits. Mollymauk,” he replies, “come here.”

Molly gives him a long, searching look, then pitches forward to collapse half-into his lap, face pressed into his collar. Caleb drags his fingers from Molly’s hairline to the back of his neck, looping an arm loosely across Molly’s bare, scarred back.

It can’t be a comfortable position for Molly to be in -- folded nearly in half with his legs straddling Caleb’s thighs, face buried in the worn fabric of Caleb’s shirt. The headboard bites into the middle of his back, despite his best attempts to get comfortable.

Molly sniffles, then laughs. “I’m getting snot all over your shirt,” he mumbles, tail lashing anxiously behind him. Down near Caleb’s feet, Frumpkin gets up and moves to the other bed.

“It has had worse things on it,” Caleb replies mildly, his free hand shifting to rub circles into Molly’s back. Molly laughs, fingers curling in the sleeve of Caleb’s shirt.

They sit there in silence for a few minutes, Molly’s breath warm and ticklish against his shoulder. In his weaker moments, he’d pictured Molly straddling him, taking pleasure from him, but this cannot get mixed up in his own desire to be punished and he doesn’t quite know how to feel about it.

Molly relaxes by slow increments, his breath evening out. “I think i’d like to lie down,” he says sheepishly, “neither of us are going to sleep like this.”

Caleb obligingly scoots downwards, and Molly pulls him onto his side and then shoves his head under Caleb’s chin. He can feel Molly’s nose up against his collar and one of Molly’s arms around his back, fingers curling in the material of the back of his shirt.

He brings one of his hands up to scratch gently through Mollymauk’s hair, smiling faintly when Molly leans up into and a purr rises in the other man’s chest slowly but surely. His tail thuds happily against the bedspread, and before Caleb can think twice about it he plants a soft kiss against the crown of Molly’s head.

\--

At some point in the night, Caleb wakes as Nott sidles in the door and shuts it behind her. She gives Caleb a deeply puzzled look, climbs into the other bed, and goes to sleep.

When Caleb wakes the next morning, Nott is gone, and the sun is shining through the thin curtains. Somehow over the course of the night, their legs have tangled together and Molly’s tail has wrapped itself around Caleb’s calf.

There’s a soft sigh from underneath his chin, and Caleb feels Molly’s lips brush his clavicle. It’s not a kiss, more a half-awake nuzzle, but Caleb guiltily secretes the sensation away for later regardless. He could imagine it as a kiss, as Molly’s mouth brushing warm and sweet up his neck to his jaw--

His face burns, and he prays to any God that might be listening that Molly doesn’t notice. The tiefling seems to be slowly waking up. There’s the faint brush of long eyelashes against his neck, and then an almighty yawn as Molly levers himself up onto one elbow, sleepily raking his hair out of his eyes.

For a few moments, they blink tiredly at each other, and Caleb wonders what it might be like if he wasn’t a broken man and he could pull Molly down to kiss him. It’s all too easy to imagine what it might be like for Molly to want him in that way, for this here to be something more than a friend in search of comfort.

“Thank you,” Molly says eventually, sitting up and stretching. Caleb watches lean muscle shift under his skin, cursing any god that cares to listen that Molly seems to prefer sleeping without a shirt on.

He realises Molly is looking at him curiously and shrugs. “Any time,” he says, and means it, “if that’s what you need.”

Molly stares at him for a long moment, then leans forward to press a kiss first to one cheek, them the other. It feels like a benediction of sorts, one Caleb is not sure he has earned, but he is selfish enough to accept the feverish burn of Molly’s mouth on his skin.

While he’s reeling, Molly pulls on his shirt and throws his coat over his shoulders. “I’m going to go and see what’s happening in the way of breakfast,” he says, and all of the soft vulnerability in his face and voice is suddenly gone. Caleb has no right to miss it, but he does.

Then Molly is gone, and Caleb puts his selfish desires from his mind. First and foremost, he needs to find their friends, and then Molly will neither want nor need comfort in the dead of night.

It is for the best, he thinks, that he does not get used to it.

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are much appreciated! :D


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